Hardware

The $250 Nintendo 3DS is available in the U.S. now. It brings glasses 3D viewing for game play, photos, and vido, motion sensor, gyroscope, and the ability to record 3D photos with its dual rear-facing cameras. Its base price is comparable to Apple’s iPod touch which starts at $229 for the 8GB model. The 3DS’ ability to provide 3D gameplay may or may not be a plus. It really depends on whether or not any of the 3D games avaiable at launch can capture the attention of its target market the way Nintendogs or Brain Age did for earlier DS models.

The 3DS’ biggest obstacle will be the price of its premiere games. These games each sell for $40. A parent for young children or a teenager with his/her own money can buy between 8 and 40 games for an iPod touch for $40. While this difference may not impact initial sales, it may impact the future health of the 3DS market. Buying 2 or 3 games for the 3DS costs $80 or $120. The same amount can buy an awful lot of iOS games, songs, and a video or two for an iPod touch (or iPhone).

Nintendo’s online DSIWare provides the ability to purchase less expensive games online. Games tend to cost around 500 DSI points which is roughly $5. However, the 3D games will probably not be in this price range for the forseeable future.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Despite all of the advances in mobile technology over the last seven years, one thing that has not seem to change much are batteries. The majority of the effort in extending battery life is being spent on getting mobile devices to use less battery power, therefore allowing the batteries to last longer.

We haven’t seen much change in how batteries hold a charge so they last longer. Consequently to make a battery provide longer periods of time they tend to be larger and heavier. It seems to me that for mobile technology to expand into even more uses there needs to be a breakthrough in batteries.

If we do need to frequently recharge batteries, an improvement is decreasing the length of time it takes to recharge them. Ars Technica has an article about research being done that enables lithium batteries to be recharged in just two minutes. The research is being done at the University of Illinois, and Ars Technica says the process they are developing lends itself to mass production.

Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader just gained the ability to purchase and download Audible audio books directly over WiFi. Previously, Audible audio books could only be transferred using a USB cable connecting the Kindle to a computer.

The Latest Kindle Offers Wireless Delivery of Audible Audiobooks via Wi-Fi (Kindle Daily Post)

Audible content is available for purchase as a section under the Kindle Store. It is not clear how this ties to an existing Audible subscription account. I did not, for example, see a way to retieve Audible audio books I have already bought over WiFi.

You might have noticed that Amazon specifically notes that Audible audio books are delivered over WiFi. This is because audio book files can sometimes be quite large (hundreds of megabytes). The 3G Kindle is bundled with free lifetime 3G wireless data service. Its cost is presumably covered by some initial fee plus some fee that Amazon pays AT&T (or Sprint for older devices) for ebook data file transmission. This negotiated fee was for relatively small ebook files, however. Moreover, huge audio book files would take a very long time to download over typical 3G speeds.

In a blog post that I wrote yesterday, I ranted about the need for a wireless charging standard, and reader James Barnes provided a link to the Wireless Power Consortium in the comments of that post. The Wireless Power Consortium has created a wireless charging standard called Qi (pronounced chee), and products with the Qi logo on it are claiming they comply with the standard.

The member list of the Wireless Power Consortium includes popular mobile manufacturers like HTC, LG Electronics, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson. Notable are companies not on the list such as Apple, HP, or Powermat. I assume that the members intend to make products that follow the Qi standard.

It looks like the Qi standard process is more like Bluetooth rather than WiFi, by which I mean companies use the standard to produce products, like Bluetooth, but there isn’t a certification process that guarantees interoperability like there is for WiFi.

Energizer appears to be the only company that currently sells a product, the Energizer ICB2B-US Qi-Enabled Position Inductive Charger (that’s a mouth full), that complies with the Qi standard. It costs $67.24 at Amazon.com, and is also available at Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot. Unfortunately, this charger can only charge a iPhone 3G & 3GS, via a sleeve, and Blackberry Curve for which there is a replacement battery door.

Sanyo announced this past fall that they are developing battery packs that comply with the standard. Sanyo’s announcement is important because it means that any mobile device for which Sanyo makes a battery could charged wirelessly without alterations (sleeves, doors, etc.) to the device. I have not seen any information about when Sanyo’s batteries might be available.

I intend to keep an eye out for news about the Qi standard, and I am hoping that we see more products that follow the standard soon.

The picture above shows the thing that I am most frustrated about with my mobile phones, the nest of cables required for me to charge them. Fortunately, all my mobile phones use a microUSB connection, which allows me to carry just one charger for all of my phones, but every time I plug the cable into the phone I tell myself there has got to be a better way.

Ok, what really frustrates me is that there is a better way, it’s called inductive, or wireless, charging, but I can’t use it. A company called Powermat sells a number of different charging mats where all you need to do is place the phone on the mat to charge it. I think the solution is absolutely brilliant, but the problem is that it only works with certain phones.

In order for the Powermat wireless charging to work you need a receiver for the phone. The receivers are either external cases, such as the ones that exist for the iPhone 4, or actual replacements to the phone’s battery cover. Unfortunately, Powermat primarily sells receivers for Blackberries and iPhones, and only has receivers for two Android phones, the HTC EVO and the Motorola DROID X. In short, they don’t make receivers for any of my phones. Powermat does sell a microUSB adapter that works with their mat, but that means plugging in something to the phone, which defeats the purpose of having the mat.

You may recall that Palm sells the Touchstone charger for the Pre, which uses the same technology as Powermat, but of course that only works for the Pre. LG has announced a wireless charging pad, which will only work with LG phones. What we need is an industry adopted wireless charging standard that enables wireless charging of any mobile phone and other portable devices from any company that makes charging mats. As long as wireless solutions are proprietary accessories they will be too expensive and will result in preventing some people from taking advantage of the technology.

In the days and years before the iPhone, iPad, and other powerful multi-function mobile gadgets, Nintendo’s GameBoy, DS, and DS Lite were “must haves” for kids and, more accurately, “must gets” for parents of those kids. They simply defined mobile gaming. Today the iPod touch and a variety of smartphone and tablet platforms are the current “must haves” for mobile gamers of all ages.

Nintendo’s large screen DSi XL did not seem to generate much interest in a world of iPhones and Android phones are very good game platforms. Will the $250 Nintendo 3DS set to launch this Sunday (Mar. 27) in the U.S. recharge Nintendo’s mobile game plan? If you are trying to decide whether to buy one for yourself or your child, you definitely want to take a peek at Engadget’s early and detailed preview of the U.S. 3DS model.

Nintendo 3DS review

Engadget notes the quirks of using a lenticular glasses-free display for gameplay. But, there overall assessment is that this a minor issue and seemed to enjoy the 3D visuals. On the other hand, the 3.5 battery life was not a winning feature.

My interest in the 3DS is its stereo 3D cameras. This essentially makes the 3DS one of the most affordable 3D cameras available. The cameras are limited to sub-megapixel 640×480 VGA photos. However, this is a good starting point to introduce 3D photography. It also provides the 3DS the ability to present Augmented Reality (AR) views. At some point in the future, 3D movies will also be available for the 3DS.

The question is: Is 3D enough to reinvigorate Nintendo’s mobile gaming platform?

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft not make a fourth generation Zune multimedia player hardware product and, instead, shift its focus to other devices like the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone.

Microsoft Said to Scrap New Zune Models After Failing to Break IPod’s Grip

Despite the Zune’s inability to break Apple’s iPod dominance in the music (mostly) player market, I think this is a bad move. It means that Microsoft has no product in the large capacity music player category. Apple has a 160GB classic even though I would guess it only sells to a single digit percentage of their market. They also have a 64GB iPod touch in their product lineup. Microsoft’s largest capacity Zune HD model provided a respectable 64GB storage. Even the first generation Zune in pictured in the photo here next to Windows Phone HTC HD7 provided 30GB of storage. And even 30GB is considered small by people with large music collections. Windows Phone currently tops out at 16GB although some brave souls can attempt to install third party SD storage cards.

Catering to a small but important (and sometimes vocal) market segment in a larger ecosystem makes sense. It provides headroom for everyone else. This provides a vision and roadmap to the future as ever increase media storage demand drives devices to larger capacities. Windows Phone’s design has made adding storage difficult for most end users. Limiting users’ options is never a good thing and leads them to consider alternatives from competitors.

There are some ideas that are simply too good to fail even though they do time after time for one reason or another. One of these failed great ideas is a mobile device that can also provide a near desktop computing experience when needed.

ZDNet’s James Kendricks excellent and detailed review of the Android powered Motorola Atrix 4G reminded me of the history of mobile computing with attached physical QWERTY keyboards.

Motorola Atrix 4G with laptop dock: first impressions

Motorola’s Atrix is an Android OS 2.2 powered smartphone that works with AT&T’s 4G wireless data network and has an optional dock that gives it a full-sized keyboard and larger display.

We’ve seen this attempted in recent years with other mobile platforms. Celio’s Redfly gave Windows Phone smartphone users the option to attach a near-full-size keyboard and 7-inch display via USB. Unfortunately, I found that it didn’t work with many of my Windows Mobile phones and was a bit unstable on the one model it worked with. It also started with an extremely high starting price ($499) that later dropped ($199). However, by then, Microsoft changed their model (Windows Phone) which is incompatible with the Redfly. Despite the problems I ran into with the Redfly, I know several people who got great value from it and took it with them nearly everywhere. The Redfly was a niche success in the Windows Mobile market and later expanded to support BlackBerry phones.

The other product in recent memory never actually launched. This was Palm’s Foleo companion that was designed as a netbook-like device that had some onboard intelligence and obtained its communications ability by tethering to a Palm Treo. Unfortunatley, it was floated as a product concept just as the netbook phenomenon was getting into high gear. The Foleo’s high price ($499) and symbiotic requirement may have doomed it before it got started.

That brings me back to my trip down mobile keyboard memory lane. I assembled a few of my personal museum pieces to illustrate the mobile keyboard’s history. The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model-100 (upper right) launched in 1983 (28 years ago!) and had what I still believe is the best mobile keyboard ever developed. It even had a 300 baud modem and could be programmed using its embedded BASIC interpreter. My recollection is that the Model-100′s software was the last project for which Microsoft’s Bill Gates played the role of lead developer. The Model-100 itself was a niche success in my opinion although it too eventually disappeared.

The NEC MobilePro 750 in the upper left ranks high in my mobile keyboard list too. It had one of the first color LCD screens in Windows CE Handheld PC device. The screen’s contrast was weak. But, the easy portability more than made up for that. It was small enough to throw in nearly any bag or briefcase. You didn’t need a special notebook case to carry it around.

The keyboard in the middle is the HP Jornada keyboard designed for use with HP’s great Jornada Handheld PCs. It too was a wonderful keyboard. You can see that it features full separate numeric and function key rows. In the bottom left corner you can see the venerable Apple Newton keyboard. It seemed like an odd admission that the Newton’s handwriting recognition was not quite up to snuff. On the other hand, it may also demonstrate that no matter how good on screen input is (and the Newton’s was actually quite good even by today’s standards), a physical keyboard is still a desirable option.

Finally, in the bottom right corner you can see my iPhone 4 and the Apple Wireless Keyboard (Bluetooth). I use this keyboard with both the iPhone 4 and the iPad. I’ve taken several trips with just this trio (iPhone 4, iPad and keyboard).

This brings us back to the Motorola Atrix. The Atrix costs $200 with a 2-year contract. Its dock which provides a keyboard and display is quite expensive at $499.99. That alone may doom this conceptually good product to failure. After all, you could go to Verizon and get a Palm Pre with free tethering, a WiFi only iPad 2, and Apple Keyboard for nearly the same price as the Atrix and its dock.

The Nintendo 3DS portable game console with a 3D viewing screen won’t be available in the U.S. until March 27. However, iFixit obtained the model released in Japan last month and tore it apart to see what’s inside. Note that the 3DS features two cameras to create its own 3D photographs.

Nintendo 3DS Teardown

- The 3DS has a relatively small battery. The battery takes about 3.5 hours to charge.
- An InfraRed (IR) port was found. However, its function is not yet known.
- The 3DS has an SD storage card slot. The 3DS ships with a 2GB SD card.
- The 3DS has a gyroscope chip
- The 3DS’s battery can be replaced by removing the back cover.
- iFixit gives the 3DS a middle ground 5 out of 10 score for repairability (10 being easiest to repair)

I found it interesting that the 3DS has a gyroscope. The iPhone 4 was the first phone that I know of to provide that feature. It is mostly used for gaming and Augmented Reality (AR) apps. At $250, the 3DS may be the least expensive 3D camera from a tier-1 company and may help kickstart consumer 3D.

Here’s something that very few of you reading this needs. But, if you do need it, you probably really really need it.

Redpark Console Cable

The simply named Console Cable has an iPad/iPhone 30-pin connector on one end an an RJ-45 plug on the other. The RJ-45 connector is designed for use with Cisco networking equipment. Note that while the RJ-45 is the same as the kind you see on an Ethernet cable, the cable is wired for Cisco’s console port specifications (Serial I/O). The cable is not designed for Ethernet use. The cable costs $69 and is specifically designed for use with an app named Get Console. This combination of products provides one more example of how far into the enterprise the iPad has come less than a year since its release.

This is is available from Amix Capital Limited and is priced at $9.99. You can find it here in the App Store.

Get Console 1.2